Top 95 Political Violence Quotes
#1. Increasingly gang violence and organized crime, together with climate change-driven natural disasters, are displacing more people as wars are fewer on the continent and political violence has decreased considerably, the NRC has decided to treat this as a humanitarian crisis.
Jan Egeland
#2. I was grateful for the opportunity to make a difference. The political violence really started in 1970-1971. The political difficulties start a little bit beyond that.
John Hume
#3. In college I studied '60s and '70s radicalism, student activism, forms of political violence, groups like the Weathermen, the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the New Left.
Marisha Pessl
#4. Terrorism n.
Violence for political purposes or the politically motivated threat of violence which, either intentionally or unintentionally, challenges the state's monopoly on political violence.
Leslie Starr O'Hara
#5. I've always been very interested in political violence. When I finished high school, I did a small dissertation about political violence and fascism in Italy.
Loretta Napoleoni
#6. I mean I grew up in Ireland, so one would have to be consciously blinkered not to have reflected on the issue of political violence because that was the story since I was 19 years old or 20.
Neil Jordan
#7. More people died as a result of the tiny abortive Easter Uprising against British rule in Ireland (1916) than died as a result of political violence in Germany during the entire National Socialist revolution.
Adolf Hitler
#8. When we use the word domestic [terrorism], we discount its actual impact as political terrorism, which is, of course, political violence meant to impact an audience outside of the immediate victims.
Malcolm Wrightson Nance
#9. Looked at objectively, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths resulting from political violence are produced by what should be understood as "state terror." Terrorism also serves as an excuse to avoid diplomacy and the peaceful resolution of conflict.
Richard A. Falk
#10. The Greek Civil War led to three decades of illegality for the Left, which had to operate under front organisations. The Cold War entrenched in power - backed by the US and Britain - a monarchist, authoritarian right for whom political violence was customary.
Anonymous
#11. Are we not, ethically speaking, obligated to stop its (violence) further dissemination, to consider our role in instigating it, and to forment and cultivate another sense of a culturally and religiously diverse global political culture?
Judith Butler
#12. Collective violence has flowed regularly out of the central political processes of western countries... The oppressed have struck in the name of justice, the privileged in the name of order, the in-between in the name of fear.
Charles Tilly
#13. The appalling crackdown that we witnessed in Hama and other Syrian cities on 30 and 31 July only erode the regime's legitimacy and increase resentment. In the absence of an end to the senseless violence and a genuine process of political reform, we will continue to pursue further EU sanctions.
William Hague
#14. It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom. It is the accumulated indignation against organized wrong, organized crime, organized injustice, which drives the political offender to act.
Emma Goldman
#15. Any new legal measures, or cooperative arrangements between government and companies meant to keep people from organizing violence or criminal actions, must not be carried out in ways that erode due process, rule of law and the protection of innocent citizens' political and civil rights.
Rebecca MacKinnon
#16. The trouble with Islam is deeply rooted in its teachings. Islam is not only a religion. Islam (is) also a political ideology that preaches violence and applies its agenda by force.
Wafa Sultan
#17. To sum up: politically speaking, it is insufficient to say that power and violence are not the same. Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent.
Hannah Arendt
#18. I do not hold to non-violence for moral reasons, but for political and practical reasons.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#19. We have to stop this violence. We have to make the political nature of the violence clear, that the violence we experience in our own homes is not a personal family matter, it's a public and political problem. It's a way that women are kept in line, kept in our places.
Patricia Ireland
#20. The era of the political was one of anomie: crisis, violence, madness and revolution. The era of the trans-political is that of anomaly: an aberration of no consequence, contemporaneous with the event of no consequence.
Jean Baudrillard
#21. The dangerous enemies of your species are fundamentalism, intolerance, separatism, extremism, hostility and prejudicial fear, be it religious, atheistic or political.
Abhijit Naskar
#22. The British leadership has acknowledged that it only became possible to end the violence in North Ireland when it stopped thinking of the [Irish Republican Army] as "a terrorist organization" and began treating it as a political actor with genuine grievances that deserved to be addressed.
Richard A. Falk
#23. Modern society, the political body, the legal and judiciary system, the state of governance, capitalism and the very fabric of the society itself, including our religions and so-called morals and values, are institutions steeped in traditions of absolute and total violence.
Bryant McGill
#24. The purpose and function of government is not to preside over change but to prevent change. By political methods when unavoidable, by violence when convenient.
Edward Abbey
#25. If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence, and sheer ignorance as religion is, you'd resign in protest.
Bill Maher
#26. As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill.
Thomas Sowell
#28. Violence is the common origin of all regimes. Life, discussion, and political choice occur only against a background of violence.
Maurice Merleau Ponty
#29. Non-violence is not a passive idea. It is ethical activism at its political best
Ela Bhatt
#30. The United States supports the reintegration of people who have fought with the Taliban into Afghan society provided they: one, renounce al Qaeda, two, lay down their arms and renounce violence, and three, participate in the public political life of the country in accordance with the constitution.
Richard Holbrooke
#31. John F. Kennedy, the man I had thought would define the political ideal for the rest of my days, was suddenly gone in the senseless violence of a single moment.
Tom Brokaw
#32. Examples of goodness that know no ethnic, religious, racial, or political bounds are important documents of war, as they also represent an axis around which a healthy future can be constructed after the atrocities have halted.
Dario Spini
#33. It is incumbent upon philosophy ... to provide a refuge for freedom. Not that there is any hope that it could break the political tendencies that are throttling freedom throughout the world both from within and without and whose violence permeates the very fabric of philosophical argumentation.
Theodor Adorno
#34. No other form of violence is legitimate. It is never acceptable to use violence to solve a problem. Whether personal or political.
Gloria Steinem
#35. First of all, my persuasion is what really breeds violence is political differences. But because religion serves as the soul of community, it gets drawn into the fracas and turns up the heat.
Huston Smith
#36. The democracy process provides for political and social change without violence.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#37. Terrorism is an act of violence whose primary purpose is to create fear and, through that, a political result.
George Friedman
#38. Terrorism is the intentional use of, or threat to use violence against civilians or against civilian targets, in order to attain political aims.
Boaz Ganor
#39. The sheer violence of it, the howl of air raid sirens and the air-cutting fall of the missiles carried its own political message; not just to President Saddam but to the rest of the world. We are the superpower, those explosions said last night. This is how we do business.
Robert Fisk
#40. Extremism in defense of liberty is not a vice, but I denounce political extremism, of the left or the right, based on duplicity, falsehood, fear, violence and threats when they endanger liberty.
George W. Romney
#41. I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the U.S. government's policy towards people of color.
Assata Shakur
#42. What you need to do in conflict resolution is to bring the people who believe that the answer to their political ambitions will be achieved through violence into a frame of mind that they accept that their political ambitions will be delivered by politics.
Des Browne
#43. On my knees, I beg of you to turn away from the paths of violence and to return to the path of peace. Those who resort to violence always claim that only violence brings about change. You must know there is a political, peaceful way to justice.
Pope John Paul II
#44. The crimes of violence committed for selfish, personal motives are historically insignificant compared to those committed ad majorem gloriam Dei, out of a self-sacrificing devotion to the flag, a leader, a religeous faith or political conviction.
Arthur Koestler
#45. Venezuelans have a deep democratic conviction. If the government hotheads ventured out to stir violence they would encounter the armed forces. I don't believe the armed forces respond to a political party.
Henrique Capriles Radonski
#46. Leaders of political parties need to keep in contact with the people; that's what it's all about. If violence were to erupt, I am fairly confident that we could control our people. Whether or not the authorities can control theirs is another matter altogether.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#47. I concluded by saying that the SEALs in that room truly gave meaning to George Orwell's observation that "people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." page 546
Robert M. Gates
#48. Violence, of course, is generally associated with frankly totalitarian forms of anti-political utopianism like Communism, but the Second World War shows that liberal universalists are as capable of violence as Communists. They are just less capable of honesty.
Greg Johnson
#49. The premise that America's power and influence was rooted in its wealth was wrong to begin with. To the contrary, our strength comes from America's magical stuff. It is something intangible, something invulnerable, something no measure of evil, no amount of violence or bloodshed can destroy.
Rick Elkin
#50. Some believe that the only way to remove the authoritarian regime and replace it with a democratic one is through violent means. I would like to set the precedent of political change through political settlement, not through violence.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#51. Gun violence has cost us too many political leaders, and hardly ever the worst ones.
P. J. O'Rourke
#52. Religion and political cartoons, as you may have heard, make a difficult couple, ever since that day of 2005, when a bunch of cartoonists in Denmark drew cartoons that had repercussions all over the world - demonstrations, fatwa, they provoked violence. People died in the violence.
Patrick Chappatte
#53. In a darkening world where the shadows of violence, political expediency, materialism and junk culture grow ever longer, sport as it is practised by its good pros remains a bastion of decency, a place where virtue is rewarded and cheating exposed.
Eamon Dunphy
#54. We must unite. Violence against women cannot be tolerated, in any form, in any context, in any circumstance, by any political leader or by any government.
Ban Ki-moon
#55. So, these political activities will create friction in and of themselves, and in this environment of friction there'll be additional violence.
John Abizaid
#56. Sorilla wasn't going to pretend that she understood how political discourse worked, but her idea of negotiation took five minutes and generally involved violence or the threat of violence if it lasted much longer.
Evan Currie
#57. The fateful equating of power with violence, of the political with government, and of government with a necessary evil has begun.
Hannah Arendt
#58. I do believe that political arrangements which are based upon violence, intimidation and theft will eventually break down - and will deserve to do so.
Margaret Thatcher
#59. When we catch sight of the soul, we can become healers in a wounded world-in the family, in the neighborhood, in the workplace, and in political life-as we are called back to our "hidden wholeness" amid the violence of the storm.
Parker J. Palmer
#60. Invisible violence in Pakistan, violence against brown people, ongoing violence in Iraq - that's got to be quantified in the same way as the cinematic glamorous violence that happens in recognisable cities.
Russell Brand
#61. The Polish freedom movement of 1968 lost its confrontation with police violence; the Prague Spring was crushed by the armies of five Warsaw Pact members. But in both countries, 1968 gave birth to a new political consciousness.
Adam Michnik
#62. Intemperance is naturally punished with diseases; rashness, with mischance; injustice; with violence of enemies; pride, with ruin; cowardice, with oppression; and rebellion, with slaughter.
Thomas Hobbes
#63. You can justify, from a political standpoint, any type of violence you want to use.
Jerry Vlasak
#64. Liberals need to take the advice they routinely give to conservatives: that there are consequences to their divisive rhetoric, and that in their attempts to score political points, they are also inciting violence.
Gary Bauer
#65. While opposing injustice nonviolently, he (Gandhi) insisted, is always morally superior to opposing it violently, opposing injustice violently is still morally superior to doing nothing to oppose it at all.
David Graeber
#66. Of course I am for stopping violence against women. It is unfortunate that the Senate Democrats are making the current re-authorization of Violence Against Women bill into a political football. The Republicans are offering an improved version of the reauthorization bill and I want to review it.
Sarah Steelman
#67. The world today is so full of violence, obscenity, war, the failure of political systems. I try to make movies that make people a bit more confident. But that doesn't mean being sugary.
Rouben Mamoulian
#68. [S]tatism is a system of institutionalized violence and perpetual civil war. It leaves men no choice but to fight to seize political power
to rob or be robbed, to kill or be killed ... Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production.
Ayn Rand
#69. As I grew older and more mature, I've been able to move beyond the immediate response of violence to a projection of the pragmatic, political consequences of that violence. So it's an effort to attain equilibrium.
Wole Soyinka
#70. Wherever arms flow, violence follows. Bullets replace ballots as the solution to political disputes.
Michael Douglas
#71. I believe that Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil.
Albert Einstein
#72. Ancient boundaries are meaningless, except for political purposes; old divisions of clan and tribe are sentimental remnants of the pre-atomic age; neither creed nor color nor place of origin is relevant to the realities of modern power to utterly seek and destroy.
Sydney J. Harris
#73. We can't handle violence in women characters but we CAN handle what's done to women in our present tense every second of the day worldwide? Or next door? Or in political or medical discourse? Please. That idea just makes me want to crap on a table at a very fancy restaurant.
Lidia Yuknavitch
#74. The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation,
Jens Stoltenberg
#75. Since Castro took power, the Cuban people have been denied basic human freedoms. No freedom of religion, no freedom of the press, no political freedom. And the regime uses brutality and violence to suppress these freedoms and impose its will.
Mitt Romney
#76. When love of one's people becomes an absolute, it turns into racism. When love of equality turns into a supreme thing, it can result in hatred and violence toward anyone who has led a privileged life. It is the settled tendency of human societies to turn good political causes into counterfeit gods.
Timothy Keller
#77. All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom.
Isabel Allende
#78. All religions have based morality on obedience, that is to say, on voluntary slavery. That is why they have always been more pernicious than any political organization. For the latter makes use of violence, the former - of the corruption of the will.
Alexander Herzen
#79. Political history is largely an account of mass violence and of the expenditure of vast resources to cope with mythical fears and hopes
Murray Edelman
#80. The sexist perception that violence by anyone against only women is anti-woman while violence by a woman against only men is just generic violence creates a political demand for laws that are even more protective of women.
Warren Farrell
#81. Fascist political gatherings tend to encourage or at least expect a little violence around the edges, particularly against counter protesters.
Rachel Maddow
#82. Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes.
Will Durant
#83. I think you will see a lot of strains develop in the political process that will result in violence everywhere in the country - but it's controllable, it's workable and it will lead to a much better future for these people.
John Abizaid
#84. If we act together on the drug problem, with a comprehensive vision devoid of ideological or political biases, we will be able to prevent much harm and violence!
Juan Manuel Santos
#85. What I intended to accomplish was to rouse the student body, not by means of an organization, but solely by my simple words; to urge them, not to violence, but to moral insight into the existing serious deficiencies of our political system.
Kurt Huber
#86. I don't think the Egyptian people want to see what is a very clear effort to obtain political and economic rights turn into any kind of new form of oppression or suppression or violence or letting loose criminal elements.
Hillary Clinton
#87. Why is one view permissible and the other criminally barred-other than because the force of law is being used to control political discourse and one form of terrorism (violence in the Muslim world) is done by, rather than to, the west?
Glenn Greenwald
#88. When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.
Robert A. Heinlein
#89. The horror of Gandhi's murder lies not in the political motives behind it or in its consequences for Indian policy or for the future of non-violence; the horror lies simply in the fact that any man could look into the face of this extraordinary person and deliberately pull a trigger.
Mary McCarthy
#90. I am deeply disturbed by the senseless violence instigated by some leaders in pursuit of their personal political agenda.
Mwai Kibaki
#91. Every rock or molotov cocktail thrown should make a very obvious political point. Random violence produces random propaganda results. Why waste even a rock?
Abbie Hoffman
#92. I did it for political, moral reasons, thinking that I was making this great sacrifice, but it was absolutely necessary; I was not going to contribute to the violence in the world anymore.
Alicia Silverstone
#93. Within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.
Sarah Palin
#94. In countries where people have to flee their homes because of persecution and violence, political solutions must be found, peace and tolerance restored, so that refugees can return home. In my experience, going home is the deepest wish of most refugees.
Angelina Jolie
#95. I think America is going to have to think through whether it wants to uplift the political dialogue or advance an approach that divides and, frankly, can lead to violence.
Jim Leach
